SRINAGAR, NOVEMBER 10: Within 5 days of opening of Durbar in Jammu, Chief Secretary BVR Subrahmanyam arrived in Srinagar on a 2-day visit to the Valley to take stock of the developmental, governance and other initiatives in the summer capital.

Immediately on his arrival here, Chief Secretary chaired a high-level meeting at the newly established Winter Secretariat to review the preparedness for rollout of Ayushman Bharat – Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Abhiyan (AB-PMJAY).

Deputy Commissioners of other districts joined the meeting through Video-Conferencing.

This was the second meeting convened by the Chief Secretary this week to review the preparedness for rollout of the scheme. Earlier, he chaired a meeting in this regard at Civil Secretariat Jammu on Thursday.

Chief Secretary directed the Deputy Commissioners to complete the registration of all the identified beneficiaries through Common Service Centres (CSCs) latest by 1st December 2018, so that Golden Card for each family is generated on time. He said the government has decided to cut the cost per registration, which is to be paid to the CSC, from Rs 30 to Rs 15 per card. He said the remaining amount will be borne by the Finance Department if the registration is done before December 15, 2018.

He also stressed the need for extending the network of empanelled Private Hospitals to increase the basket of choice. It is heartening that over 2000 CSCs have got registered within 48 hours since the last meeting and are ready to enrol beneficiaries to give cards for availing services in the State under AB-PMJAY. The Deputy Commissioners were also directed to launch intensive and sustained awareness campaign on the flagship health insurance scheme. DCs were also directed to set-up special teams for launching door to door campaign for realizing the targets.

Regarding the migratory population, it was clarified that they can enrol for getting cards wherever they are located. As regards the inaccessible areas which have connectivity issues, DCs were asked to seek assistance of Police and Army authorities for achieving the enrolment targets.

Chief Secretary said that in view of the ongoing examinations, the district administration must move ahead with the enrolment process in a phased manner so that the school going children, who have been categorized as beneficiaries, are not left out of the registration process.

Chief Secretary was informed about the pace of the enrolment process in the Valley with districts like Baramulla and Pulwama already having generated a small chunk of Golden Cards that will be handed over to the beneficiaries at the time of rolling out of the scheme.

The DCs briefed the Chief Secretary about the steps being taken to ensure cent percent enrolment by involving the human resource of various state departments like Rural Development, Health and Social Welfare in the enrolment process.

AB-PMJAY is a flagship national health insurance programme to be launched by Prime Minister Ist December 2018. The scheme will provide health insurance cover of Rs 5 lakh per family per year (on a family floater basis) to about 30 lakh souls in J&K belonging to poor, deprived rural families and identified occupational categories of urban workers’ families as per the Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC) data.

The scheme will cover medical and hospitalization expenses at secondary and tertiary care levels. PMJAY has defined 1,350 medical packages covering surgery, medical and day care treatments including medicines, diagnostics and transport. The scheme will be cashless and paperless at public hospitals and empanelled private hospitals. The beneficiaries will not be required to pay any charges for the hospitalization expenses. The benefit also includes pre and post-hospitalization expenses.

Mark Twain once famously quipped, ‘If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re mis-informed.’ And it holds true even today, infact it is more pronounced in this day and age of social media, reflected in the way our main stream media is reporting these days . The truth gets drowned in the loud voices of political party representatives and generously paid participants, each one of them pushing his own agenda.